


Karaoke Interruptus

by chellerrific



Category: Bleach
Genre: Don't Drink and Karaoke Kids, Drunkenness, Gen, Hisagi is shirtless in this one, Hisagi shmoops Mashiro ships Kensei hates everyone, Matsumoto is responsible for everything, One day he will kill them all, Papa Kensei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chellerrific/pseuds/chellerrific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kensei ran out of patience for this crap long, long ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Karaoke Interruptus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/gifts).



> Minor spoilers for recent chapters, but none of the big paradigm-shifting stuff. (If such spoilers exist.)

The message from Captain Hitsugaya was short and to the point: _Come retrieve your junior lieutenant. He is embarrassing himself in my division._

Mashiro was there when it came, tapping her lips with the end of the glitter gel pen she always used to write her articles no matter how many times she was told not to. Her presence was not so much unfortunate as unavoidable; she had always taken her duty to stay with Kensei too far, all the better to irritate the crap out of him. So if he was in the office, it was a safe bet she would be too, sprawled out on the sofa or perched on his desk. Shuhei didn’t seem to mind that they came in a set of two, though, and Kensei had long ago learned to appreciate any quiet he got from Mashiro when she happened to give it, so as long as she was, he was marginally more inclined to tolerate her presence in his workspace.

“‘Embarrassing himself’?” Mashiro repeated.

“Drinking, probably.” He’d seen that Matsumoto woman drink half the Eleventh under the table and knew Shuhei often joined her.

“Shuhei’s been drinking?” Mashiro pouted. “And he didn’t invite _me_?”

Bless the boy for small favors was all Kensei could think in response to _that_ horrifying suggestion. The only thing worse than wrangling Mashiro was wrangling Mashiro when she was drunk. In fact, now that the prospect had been brought up, he decided that if it did happen, he was going to call up Lisa and Shinji and let the two of them deal with it. That preempted at least a few blood pressure spikes, he was sure.

“Well,” Kensei said with a sigh, getting to his feet. “I guess I’d better go clean up after his sorry ass.”

Mashiro jumped up and immediately attached herself to his side. He’d considered adding “You stay here” but decided to save the effort, knowing she would follow him anyway. The prospect of such juicy gossip was too much for her to resist even if she wanted to.

It was a short trip to the Tenth. Once they got there, Kensei saw—or, more accurately, _heard_ why the message hadn’t bothered to be more specific about where exactly in the compound Kensei should go to find his errant subordinate.

Mashiro’s eyes widened. “Is that music? Is this a _party_? Now I’m _really_ offended I wasn’t invited. This is all your fault, Kensei!”

“What? _My_ fault? How does _that_ even make sense?”

“It’s because you’re such a wet blanket! You’ve ruined my reputation and now everybody thinks I’m a grumpy bear by association. Ooh, this is so unfair! I’m going to have to party _twice_ as hard to make up for you now!”

“The hell you are!”

Mashiro dashed into the building, ready to get started on this new resolution, Kensei hot on her heels. He didn’t think the kid in charge of this place would appreciate the casualties his division would suffer if Kensei had to deal with that just now.

They followed the sound of the music to the mess hall, where Shuhei and the blond kid from Rose’s division were giving a performance sans most of their shihakusho. A number of members of the Tenth had gathered to cheer them on, and their lieutenant, looking flushed, waved her arms and shrieked the loudest.

“A karaoke party! Without me!” Mashiro wailed. “I’m docking Shuhei’s pay for this!”

“You don’t have the authority!” Kensei reminded her. He waded through the audience, most of whom had the sobriety and sense to get out of his way once they registered who he was.

“Captain!” Shuhei gasped, dropping the microphone in a cacophony of clatter and interference.

“C’mon. We're going back,” Kensei said, grabbing his arm and towing him out bodily, like a parent would a disobedient child.

“C-Captain, I—”

“Save it,” Kensei told him brusquely.

They passed Rose on their way out.

“Rose, you missed it!” Mashiro told him. “Kensei broke up a karaoke party!”

“Your boy’s still in there,” Kensei added, jerking his head back towards the mess hall.

Rose sighed, shaking his head. “How… inelegant.”

“Don’t blame Izuru, Captain Obitoroshi,” Shuhei said, swaying slightly.

“He got two syllables,” Mashiro observed. “That’s pretty good.”

Shuhei seemed not to have heard, or at least not understood. “It was Rangiku’s idea. I mean mine. My idea.”

Rose gave him a pat on the shoulder. “That’s a touching, if clumsy, attempt at loyalty, but karaoke is a crime committed by all participants. I’ll go see to mine now.” He nodded to the three of them, then continued on his way.

Shuhei watched him go. “Oh, man. I hope he doesn’t tell _my_ captain.”

Mashiro giggled. “I like him like this.”

“Well, soak as much in as you can now because it’s not something you’re going to see again,” Kensei told her, the three of them emerging back into the fading afternoon light.

“Oh, come on. You and Rose and Toshiro are making a big deal out of nothing! Aren’t they, Shuhei?”

Shuhei chose that moment to trip over his own two feet and take a header into the ground. He seemed to find this hilarious, which, in his defense, it was.

Not to Kensei, though. He hauled Shuhei back up to his feet and looked his bare chest over for scrapes. Kensei hadn’t seen Shuhei’s kosode or shitagi before they left and hadn’t felt like trying to find them at the time. If they turned up, that little guy would see them returned.

“Captain,” Shuhei said, suddenly grave. “I have a confession to make.”

Mashiro clenched her fists under her chin, looking ready to burst. The word “confession” was more than enough to get the debauched, Lisa-infected wheels in her head turning.

“My tattoo is like yours,” Shuhei finished in a low, conspiratorial voice. “This one here, see?” He pointed to his cheek helpfully.

Kensei gingerly adjusted the boy’s sagging hakama. “Yeah, I… heard something to that effect.”

“Rangiku told, didn’t she? She’s got such a big rack. I really admired you and wanted to be like you and also you saved my life that time and then here you are and I was afraid it might be presum—pres—pr—that thing I’m trying to say. But it just—it just meant so much to me, see? I’m here because of you, and that’s like… whoa.” He mimed his head exploding.

Kensei sighed. Great. The kid had to be a shmoopy drunk, in addition to the usual clumsy and inarticulate. “No, it’s all right. It’s… flattering.”

“Are you sure? Because Rangiku said—”

“I said it’s flattering and I meant it, so be happy, damn you!”

Mashiro sighed. “There you go again, ruining the moment with your temper. You have no romance in your soul, Kensei.”

Kensei honestly didn’t know which of them he wanted to strangle more, though in these instances it was usually safest to default to Mashiro.

He definitely knew it was Mashiro when the next Seireitei Communication came out and there was a “blind” item about the incident—not really all that blind, given that there had been dozens of witnesses to the karaoke party and those who’d missed it either had heard about it or could easily find out. From there it wasn’t hard to put two and two together, even for the exceptionally mathematically-challenged. Shuhei assured him the accusations of romance were completely untrue; Kensei told him he knew they were; Shuhei insisted harder that they were; Kensei said he _knew_ they were untrue, dammit, so just shut the hell up about it already.

Mashiro feigned innocence, claiming it could have been anyone who wrote the item, since it was unsigned, but Kensei knew better: even if it weren’t completely obvious, Mashiro was the only one who could have slipped it right under Shuhei’s nose like that.

Besides, when Shuhei went to find the original article, he discovered it had been written with a glitter gel pen.

**Author's Note:**

> Bingeing on every non-filler episode of the English dub last month after many years of fansubs has totally addled my already extremely poor memory for the various forms of address each individual uses for each other individual. I am Yachiru and Ichigo levels of bad at names, y’all, don’t expect too much of me. Therefore I’ve taken the coward’s way out and largely defaulted to given names, as that’s what the dub tends to use. Mashiro joining the “not calling Hitsugaya by his title” club was too hard to pass up anyway, regardless of canonicity. I really love tormenting that guy.
> 
> I got to use the word “cacophony” today, so ultimately I have regrets.
> 
> (Did you guys ever have glitter gel pens? Those things were the best.)


End file.
